Fort Smith Symphony Caps Season With A Bang

Fort Smith Symphony members plan to cap off their 90th anniversary celebration with its biggest concert to date.

Fort Smith Symphony members plan to cap off their 90th anniversary celebration with its biggest concert to date.

Led by music director John Jeter, the symphony will perform its final concert of the 2013-14 season, "The Golden Ring," at 7:30 p.m. May 17 at the Arkansas Best Corporation Performing Arts Center, 55 S. Seventh St. The event will showcase the playing talents of 112 musicians and will highlight one of Wagner’s most popular works, said Jeter.

"We wanted to end our 90th season with something really big, and unless someone has something earth-shatteringly important on their calendar, they really, really should attend this concert," he said. "This concert will be a once-in-a-lifetime thing for a lot of audience members."

The symphony will perform "The Ring without Word," which features Wagner’s landmark moments from his four operas that constitute "Ring of the Nibelungen." The latter is the "largest operetta ever composed," including 15 hours of music that would span over four evenings, Jeter said.

"This evening will include big musical moments that have become famous orchestral pieces on their own," he said. "This concert is a special version – the Wagner family asked Lorin Maazel to create a single work out of Wagner’s work. It’s 99.9 percent Wagner."

The material will include a couple of moments where "an important vocal line" is given to an instrument; the presentation will be via instruments only, Jeter said.

"Maazel would take other little portions of the opera and create these tiny transitional sections," he said. "It’s taking these great moments and putting them together in chronological order that is a huge thing."

The symphony’s concert also will include Verdi’s "La Traviata, prelude to Act I," as well as Saint-Saens’ "Piano Concerto No. 2, op. 22 in G Minor." The latter will be performed by guest artist Louis Schwizgebel.

"This really is a huge concert," Jeter said. "For something like this to be done in our community is great. It’s the biggest concert of its kind that has ever happened in our town."